Opinion
By Jeff Childers
07-24-23
Good morning, C&C, it is Monday! Today’s terrific roundup includes: Twitter rebranded to… X?; Israel is rapidly melting down right when its signature Prime Minister starts having mystery cardiac symptoms; pride paraders offer clues to their real motives; SADS political commenter; Dick Durbin covid cases; another SADS on air collapse; Proxy War update shows unresourceful Ukraine on thin military ice; and fighting cats show courage and resourcefulness, unlike Ukrainians.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 Elon Musk was trending yesterday over announcements of the mysterious rebranding of Twitter to … just “X”. That’s it. The website x.com — reserved and held by Musk since 1999 — is now live, and the little bluebird has been replaced with the new, unexciting black and white “X” logo:
I’m not making it up and so far, it’s not doing very much for me. X marks the spot? Rated X? X-men? X factor? Generation X? X ray? Will tweets be called “X’s” now?
Elon Musk explained “X” means “Everything.” (Which doesn’t start with an “X.” It starts with an “E”, but I digress.) Musk has consistently said his goal is to turn Twitter into a “universal” app, combining tweeting, messaging, blogging, live streaming, video conferencing, voice calls, games, online stores, and perhaps most significant: an instant payment system.
Payment processing is where the big money is. And he should know: Musk’s fortune came from developing one of the first digital payment platforms. You might’ve heard of it — PayPal. The serial entrepreneur also knows his way around cryptocurrency, long favoring a largely-unknown one called Dogecoin (it has a dog logo).
At some point, people are going to claim the Twitter opportunity was obvious in hindsight. But when Musk bought the massively-overpriced, massively-overstaffed Twitter, it was losing money faster than a Biden shell corporation, despite glacier-sized government and pharma stealth subsidies. Twitter was so badly infested with undercover spooks and saboteurs that, more than anything else, it resembled a CIA headquarters-sized Cold War safe house.
What Musk overpaid for was one of the largest subscriber bases ever. Not coincidentally, he’s been busily purging fake bot accounts, and gathering people’s credit cards and banking information through verified accounts, pay-only-content (like Substack), and recently, revenue sharing. It’s probably also not a coincidence that Musk’s new “X” brand shifted into gear right after FedNow went live.
Musk’s other products, like electric cars, commercial spaceships, and boring diggers, for obvious examples, have all been innovative and disruptive. It is also well known that, whenever government started running social media, social media stopped innovating. Nothing has changed or improved on social media for years.
I think Musk is about to show the social media market something completely new. I get it, these days everything is suspicious. But social media has been long overdue for a tech makeover.
🚀 The New York Times ran a shocking story yesterday headlined, “With Israel in Turmoil, Netanyahu Is Hospitalized for Pacemaker.” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin “BiBi” Netanyahu, 73, went in for “unscheduled” — meaning emergency — surgery yesterday, after wearing a heart monitor last week following a “mild dizziness” from dehydration on the Sea of Galilee beach. On Sunday, they put a permanent pacemaker in his chest.
Mysteriously, no media source I could find offered any diagnosis for why he needed the pacemaker.
Following surgery, his doctors said he was “in complete cardiac health” and Netanyahu said he was feeling “excellent.” So don’t worry. At least, not about that. And, I’m not going to say it. But I will screenshot this crazy conspiracy theory:
Toby’s not wrong. And it would make Netanyahu the most senior government official yet with a serious vaccine injury. As for the coverup of his condition, there’s a bigger reason to bury BiBi’s health problems than just protecting the jabs. Israel cannot afford for BiBi to look weak right now.
The Prime Minister’s health emergency, whatever caused it, comes at a particularly bad time in the Jewish nation’s history. Israel is ensnared in its worst domestic political and military crisis in decades — a situation possibly as serious as its 1973 Yom Kippur War. The country’s domestic affairs are near civil war, over a major court reform package intended to rein in what conservatives believe is an out-of-control, woke, hyper-liberal Supreme Court that wields unaccountable veto power over virtually any law passed by the government. The Court can — and often does — void any law its members deem “unreasonable,” which is virtually anything favored by conservative Israelis.
Meanwhile, at the personal level, Netanyahu is also a defendant in no fewer than THREE pending criminal cases over alleged “corruption”, based on charges about as flimsy as what President Trump is facing.
And all of that internal conflict swirls amidst Israel’s most dangerous external foreign crisis in history, as nuclear intelligence agencies are ringing alarms bells that its mortal enemy Iran is about to go fully nuclear in about five minutes, if it hasn’t already. Iran has sworn it will destroy Israel as soon as it get a chance, and it would only take a couple nukes to entirely erase the Jewish homeland. And the missiles could be launched from Damascus, Syria, which is minutes of flight time from major Israeli cities.
That’s a problem.
The goal of preventing Israel from building a bomb seems to be something of a lost cause. Consider this Friday headline from military news site DEFCON Warning System, which presupposes that Iran already has the bomb:
Israel has always pledged it would do whatever was necessary to stop Iran getting the bomb. Israel failed. The ailing Netanyahu, who once proudly bragged about using his fully-mandated citizens as Pfizer’s experimental playthings, now has a political path resembling a mature alligator pit. It must be kind of hard for him to decide which policy reptile to tackle first. (Be the chicken!)
One wonders how much heart BiBi has left for handling this crisis.
Mr. Netanyahu appears to believe he has no choice but to reform the Supreme Court. And that will put Israel squarely sideways with its primary military ally, the United States. Joe Biden personally warned Israel’s president last week that America might withdraw its support if the Knesset (Israel’s Congress) reduces in any way its Supreme Court’s ability to curtail conservative laws.
Worse — especially in light of the Iranian crisis — the vaunted Israeli military, which is 100% necessary to the country’s continued survival, is getting wobbly. Israeli protest leaders have promised that thousands of volunteer army reservists will strike, refusing to report for duty, if the government continues with its court reform plans.
With Iran moments away from getting the bomb, it’s no time for a reservist strike. But protestors appear willing to allow Israel to be destroyed rather than lose power at the Supreme Court:
The Guardian reported darkly this morning that, “These are dangerous cracks,” military chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi wrote in a letter to soldiers on Sunday addressing the tensions. “If we will not be a strong and cohesive military, if the best do not serve in the IDF , we will no longer be able to exist as a country in the region.”
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli protesters and counter-protesters organized over the weekend. By the time you read this, Israel will be embroiled in internal conflict.
And, for whatever it’s worth, the World Economic Forum also opposes Israel’s judicial reforms. Yesterday, Klaus Schwab advisor and human worm Yuval Noah Harrari published an inflammatory op-ed in the Financial Times:
There’s no telling how this incendiary vat of variables will work out. But if it tells you anything, the Jewish state’s problems are completely consuming Joe Biden’s limited cognitive capacity. One senses a sort of secret nuclear red line dimly illuminated by global geopolitics swirling around Jerusalem, ironically now tenuously connected by weakened cardiac arteries to its leader’s jabs.
As the Bible cautioned thousands of years ago, the wages of sin is death.
🔥 There is also a strange connection between Israel’s woes and the LGBTQIA++ movement. In case you were wondering whether the Rainbow Army was a real movement or just a useful tool for marxists, a new clue appeared in the data over the weekend. Protestors at a “Queer pride” event in Berlin chanted pro-Palestine slogans. However you feel about the Israel-Palestine issue, the muslims in Palestine would stone gays to death, so it seems weird for the Alphabet Crew to be supporting the LGBT-hating muslims. Or … do you think the protestors even know?
Somebody needs to explain how “pride” is a real movement and not just a bunch of useful idiots. Make it make sense.
💉 Well-known democrat and accomplished New Mexico political consultant James Hallinan, 40, died abruptly and mysteriously on Saturday. His “untimely” death was announced by a political think tank that he helped found.
No cause of death was released. They understand the politics.
There were lots of comments on social media from people who knew James. They expressed shock and dismay. It seems fair to conclude he hadn’t been sick long. Many commenters expressed dark suspicions James’ death had something to do with the fact he successfully sued New Mexico’s lockdown-loving, unladylike democrat governor for sexual harassment.
💉 The Hill reported yesterday that fully-jabbed and double-boosted democrat Senator Dick Durbin will have to miss several important meetings on the National Defense Authorization Act this week because … well, see for yourself:
Third time! He must not be wearing his mask properly. Senator Durbin also tested positive for the virus at the end of July 2022, and in March of this year. He plans to stay safe and quarantine at home this week, so that he can help flatten the curve or something.
I think he needs more jabs.
💉 ESPN Commentator and former soccer player Shaka Hislop became the latest on-air casualty this weekend when he dramatically, suddenly, and unexpectedly collapsed on live TV during the Real Madrid-AC Milan game. He’s in the hospital and fortunately is reported to be conscious and talking.
Watch the clip carefully and tell me if it looks to you like he even realizes he’s collapsing. And in case you were wondering, the answer to the big question is, “Yes.”
So.
🚀 The Proxy War narrative began to make its big turn this weekend, preparing the political battlefield for the 2024 election cycle. The Wall Street Journal ran a dispirited, full-form, magazine-style piece Sunday headlined, “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia.” The sub-headline ominously explained, “U.S. and Kyiv knew of shortfalls but Kyiv still launched offensive.”
Ukraine “risks” stalemate! Check out the story’s lead paragraph:
When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t.
Oh. So we always knew it probably wouldn’t work. That will be of little comfort to the relatives of dead Ukrainian conscripts who were promised a well-supplied, non-corrupt glorious battle to free Ukraine.
It might not be a great day for Ukraine, but oh! What a glorious day for the narrative! The much-vaunted but now obviously doomed-from-the-start Spring CounterOffense wasn’t a mistake, no, not at all. Western leaders knew Ukraine’s chances were poor, but they hoped “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”
Hoped? From its very first paragraph, the Wall Street Journal pretended like no one ever heard that old trope, “hope is not a plan.”
So, there was no real plan. Just the meat grinder.
And there’s another part: According to the Journal, Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness are not carrying the day. See, it’s the Ukrainians’ fault! They weren’t brave or resourceful enough. And finally, we see blunt admission that U.S. presidential politics are rapidly dooming the Ukrainians’ dependence on weapons and ammunition:
The political calculus for the Biden administration is complicated. President Biden is up for re-election in the fall of 2024 and many in Washington believe concerns in the White House about the war’s impact on the campaign are prompting growing caution on the amount of support to offer Kyiv.
The Journal thinks it’s complicated, but it’s not complicated. The liberals created and honed the anti-war technique, and are fully aware of the damage it can inflict on a presidential campaign. Lyndon Johnson decided not even to try for re-election because he was mired in the slough of Vietnam. Incumbent Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide to a long-shot actor, Ronald Reagan, because Carter was being politically strangled by the vines of a seemingly irresolvable Iranian hostage conundrum.
Ukraine’s needs must yield to the needs of the many. The many democrats. They’re both important goals, but the deep state calculates it’s more important to beat Trump than to keep hold of its bioweapons crack house in Ukraine.
Despite all the relentless propaganda about how Ukraine is about to get F-16’s any day now, how the Patriot missile batteries create an impenetrable force field over the country, and how a gigantic reserve of unused Leopard tanks strain at the leash awaiting Zelenskyy’s order to charge, the Wall Street Journal boiled the Ukrainian problems down to two factors: they simply don’t have enough men to mount a successful attack on Russian defenses, and the wily Russians are beating them senseless from above, using artillery, missiles, drones, helicopters, and planes.
It won’t be long now.
🔥 Finally, in the spirit of martial accomplishment, we’ll give fighting feline fans some love today. Enjoy this clip of courageous and resourceful cats versus snakes and other pesky problems. And they don’t even need F-16’s.
Have a magnificent Monday! Come on back here tomorrow morning for another snarky and informative Coffee & Covid roundup.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
